The Devil's Guard, page 14
Grim asked a poser then:
"Can we four find our way in?"
Lhaten laughed. "I am not your judge," he answered. "If you wish to turn back now before it is too late, I can protect you as far as the place you started from."
Grim's voice shot the answer back at him abruptly:
"None of us wishes to turn back."
Narayan Singh echoed him:
"I shall not turn back." Chullunder Ghose sighed:
"I am afraid to turn back. I am afraid of my own opinion of myself, which is not good to begin with and would be intolerable if any worse."
"Rammy, old top, how about you?" Grim asked, for the creaking bed had announced I was awake.
The one thought uppermost in my mind was that we must rescue Rait. I said so. Lhaten answered:
"You will not succeed."
"We'll have a crack at it," said Grim.
There was silence after that for a long time, except that all coughed in the smoke. Lhaten was the next to speak:
"I warn you," he said. "If you go forward, you can no more turn back than Galileo could, once he had made his discovery—or than Caesar could, after he crossed the Rubicon. I speak of physical impossibilities—as, for instance, putting chickens back into the egg, or frogs back into tadpoles. The mere crossing of the mountains, difficult though it is, is the least of it. Let me try to explain: it is physical—absolutely physical, although not as you understand physics.
"Two of you are from the West and must have seen this often: a man creates a business—lives for it—loves it. That business is himself. Let us say that at fifty or sixty years of age he has a fortune and retires, intending to take life easy. How long is it, as a rule, before he dies? One year? Two years?
"But let us suppose that the same man undertakes a new activity in place of the old one. Instead of dying of the first disease that comes his way he lives his life out to a full conclusion. Why? Because he has regained momentum. He is going forward. He had explored his business until there were no new corners for him; now he explores new realms, and as long as he continues to explore them, he can live until his body wears out. But again, if he ceases, he dies—because nothing in nature is allowed to stand still.
"Now observe, because this applies to you: the man who has given up his business without having fully exhausted its possibilities for him, can return to it and so save himself. He has not yet grown out of the egg. But if he has exhausted all the possibilities for him of what he left, he can not return to it and live.
"It is for you to consider whether you will not now return to the world you have run away from. It may be you can live your lives out to their full conclusion. But if you decide to go forward, you have first to prove that you are fitted to discover what you seek; and there is no way to prove that except by doing it. Like men engaged in an experiment with unknown forces, you will be in constant danger. If, in spite of all the dangers, you should make your great discovery, you would then be like tadpoles that have evolved into frogs. You would have escaped the tadpole dangers, only to find frog enemies from whom the White Lodge would have to protect you until you should learn how to protect yourselves. And now tell me this: Can you think of one man, who ever discovered anything worth while, who has not had to cope with mysterious obstructions placed in his path? Name any one you like—poet, musician, astronomer, chemist, philosopher—or consider yourselves; have you ever accomplished anything without apparently intelligent obstruction meeting you at every turn! It is like going uphill: there is a law of gravity against you. The desire to go uphill— to discover something, that is—is the impulse of life, and there are those who continually study the laws which govern it. Those are the great ones whom you seek. The downhill pull—the activity of ignorance, prejudice, passion, superstition—that is the law of death; and there are they who study that, who revel in it, who identify themselves with it. They are the enemy; and they are deadly dangerous.
"There are laws which govern all phenomena, and a man who discovers a law of electricity not only can produce effects with it but also can make electricity available to others. Whoever discovers more recondite laws can produce effects with them and make their effects available to others. He may not be able to make others understand the law, but he can give others its benefit or impose on them the resultant evil—as in the case of electricity, for instance, or, in another instance, poison gas.
"A man who would not know how to begin to make electric light can have its benefit, because of the mental labors of Faraday, Edison, Tesla and others. A man who would not know how to begin to make poison gas can obtain it and use it against others, or suffer from it, because of the mental processes of those who have studied how to deal death.
"Now practically all men who have made a great discovery have done so in the hope of benefitting all humanity. Perhaps the chemist who discovered poison gas intended it to be used for beneficial purposes; and so it can be used. It is the misuse of a force that makes it evil, and it is possible to misuse any force whatever— the forces of steam, electricity, chemistry, religion—and the prodigious force of thought.
"Therefore, they who study life, and who have discovered many of the secrets of the universe, oblige themselves to guard those secrets; because there are others, who would use them to make mischief. They who study death are no less in communion with occult forces than are they who study life, and they are equally whole-hearted in their persistence—as you can readily understand if you remember how gravity opposes every effort to rise upward. Follow up that analogy and recall how great teachers have been attacked, vilified, and very often, murdered.
"If a man makes a great medical discovery, what happens? Do not the charlatans pounce on his discovery and use it for their own enrichment? Now do you begin to see why they, who are known by rumor only, save to a very few who have seen and spoken with them, are obliged to live in secret and to hide their knowledge from the world? Could they dare to release their knowledge except to individuals whom they know and trust?
"And who are those whom they shall trust? Is it not obvious they must be of a certain character? Morals depend on character, remember, and not character on morals. A man's religion makes no difference— none whatever. Can two men belonging to different religions not at one and the same moment discover a new comet or an unknown law of mathematics? To pursue evil a man must have evil tendencies which will increase through cultivation as he becomes more and more responsive to the impulses that govern evil. Owls live in the dark. Whales swim in the sea. Men with scientific tendencies discover laws of nature. Only those who have the character pertaining to the path they choose can succeed in the end; and though a shoemaker, like Kabir, can become a poet, that was because he had the poet's nature. In the same way, only they who have the necessary character can find or be received into the White Lodge, although anybody can receive its benefits, as any one may read the poems of Kabir.
"And they who are the Keepers of the Secrets can read character as you can read a book."
Lhaten ceased and there was silence until Narayan Singh stirred the embers with a stick, selecting a few pieces of dry wood and putting them to burn carefully so as not to increase the smoke.
"As for myself, I have slain many men," he remarked. "How is that as to character?"
"How many men did the Lord Buddha slay?" asked Lhaten.
"None," he answered.
"There you err," said Lhaten. "Did he not teach? Were there not many slain simply because they approved his teachings and adopted them?"
"I slew with mine own hand," the Sikh said.
"For gain? From fear? In passion?" Lhaten asked. "Nay, nay! Don't answer! I am not your judge. It is not I who must say yes or no."
"I know that. If you were he, I would fight you," said Narayan Singh.
Chullunder Ghose piped up, his voice peculiarly strained and squeaky, though it was normally a well-placed baritone:
"Am personally peaceful, never having slain man or beast. Moreover, I have taught nothing that could cause men to be killed. I am Failed B.A., but I have more intelligence than the examiners who marked my papers. Might I not be a suitable jar, for the teachers to pour their wisdom into me, that I may pour it out again!"
"In driblets, at a profit?" Lhaten asked.
"But I must live," said the babu.
"Live then," Lhaten answered. "It is not I who will prevent. The Wisdom can neither be bought nor sold, being like virtue which, if man or woman should sell it, could never have been virtue."
"Can a man know beforehand whether he can make the grade?" asked Grim.
"If not, how should he succeed?" asked Lhaten. "A man may know he can succeed, and yet fail; but unless he knows he can, he never will."
There was another long silence, broken only by the sound of coughing and the gusts of wind that rattled the wooden shutter. Then Grim asked a question that was uppermost in my mind:
"Who gives these their authority?"
Lhaten laughed. "Who gave Galileo his authority to fend out that the earth moves? The authorities forbade him, didn't they? They forced him to recant, and he was much too sensible to make a martyr of himself and flatter his own vanity by being burned alive. He had let the truth out; and the same authority within himself that gave him leave to do that also warned him to protect himself by letting the fools believe they had suppressed truth. But truth, once out, can never be suppressed, although it can be imitated and misused. The proof of a man's authority is in its consequences. There is no authority from outside. All comes from within. But they are rare who recognize authority; and they are still more rare who have the courage to obey it. Some call it conscience, which is a lame word, having fallen from a high place."
Once more there was silence, but the wind outside howled like a host of furies and somewhere in the monastery building bronze bells summoned monks to midnight ritual. Again Narayan Singh put dry wood on the embers and the flame leaped up illuminating Grim's face. Lhaten was in darkness.
"Who are these Mahatmas—men?" Grim asked.
"Very plain men," Lhaten answered. "Wisdom avoids Vanity. Was Newton vain? Or Beethoven? Or Lao Tse?"
"Who taught them what they know?" Grim asked.
"Who taught the years to roll onward? Or the earth to move around the sun? There are greater than they, whom they know from afar off, dimly, even as you have heard of them and seek them. The Mahatmas, to themselves, are ordinary men, too fallible, beset by their own perplexities. Our problems are very simple to them, because they mastered such elementary conditions as ours—in former lives; which is why they are called Masters. They have advanced to higher problems. Does a child at school not have to learn his alphabet, which to the one who can read has become part of his very nature, like the ability to breathe? Next, does he not learn to read, which to him may be difficult, although foolishly easy to the older child who has advanced to foreign languages. Does he not have to learn arithmetic by practice? Does that not lead on to algebra, and to equations, and to calculus—each step requiring mastery by hard work consciously directed to the end in view? Are there not realms to be mastered, each advance revealing new realms unimaginable to the student who has not yet reached them—so that he who knows the most is most aware of how illimitable knowledge is?
"It is so with life—with men. A newsboy lives in a world of short horizons and extremely sharply drawn convictions. But he gains by the experience. He rises and becomes a clerk. And is he not now in a new world? Is any contour of it quite the same, or are the old associations as important! Values have altered, or rather his sense of them. Good: let us say he has character; he goes on up until he manages a business. And at each new forward step do his horizons not increase? Imagine him at last, the President of the United States. Could he return into the newsboy mold—or cease to have a sympathy for newsboys, or for clerks or managers or for all the men in circumstances he himself has battled with?
"It is the same with all life: everything is evolving into something else. What then becomes of men who have evolved above your plane and mine without as yet becoming more than men? They can understand us, having been as we are. Can we understand them? Could they associate with us, to our advantage or to theirs, any better than a president could live among the newsboys, or than Einstein, let us say, could live among race-course touts? Would any of you choose to live among the riffraff of the docks? Or, if you had the opportunity, would you refuse to influence that riffraff for their good, to the extent that they could understand you?
"Forgive me if I seem too frank, for I do not intend discourtesy. The difference between you and the riffraff of the brothels of Bombay is not greater than the difference between the Masters and yourselves. Should they then associate with you? And what good would it do?"
"What happens if a man should try to make that grade—and fails?" Grim asked him.
Lhaten seemed to hesitate, as if he listened to the wind under the monastery eaves. Then:
"How are the ranks of master criminals recruited?" he asked. "What happens when a scientist goes wrong, or a philosopher, or any educated man? Is he not worse than the ignorant? Is he not more dangerous? So—whence do you suppose the ranks of dugpas are recruited? The White Lodge will exclude, but it will never kill. Then what shall he do who has learned much, yet has erred because of evil in him and by his own lack of integrity excludes himself? Can he forget his knowledge? Envy, hatred and malice enter into him and he becomes a leader of the enemies of light. He calls his darkness light and seeks to justify himself by deeds. He uses his intelligence to smother light, identifies himself with all negation and attracts to himself all those who by nature are unwilling to resist or are too stupid to prevent him. That is the source of the legend of fallen angels."
"What finally becomes of them?" asked Grim.
Lhaten stared at the embers a while. Then, at last:
"What becomes of the fire that has eaten the wood!" he replied. "Fire is a bad master. Better to grow trees, though fire come and consume them. The very worst that fire can do is to release the elements of what it burns. Does any of you wish your very spirit to revert into its elements? Serve evil if you do. Become a dugpa. It is first a little comfortable fire that warms the intellect; and some, by growing used to heat, endure it for a long time. Even rocks burn when the heat grows great enough. Better to grow trees and guard against the fire."
He left the room then silently, as if he had said too much, closing the door without making a sound, and for an hour, I dare say, we all stared into the embers while the wind howled like the baying of the dogs of Death, from over the Roof of the World beyond which lay the deserts and the mystery of Tibet—until at last I fell asleep and dreamed about black devils torturing Rait in a dungeon underneath a mountain, where Grim and Narayan Singh had gone away and left me. It seemed to be my turn to be tortured next.
Chapter Thirteen—A dugpa—and a mystery as easy to elucidate as that of life and death.
It is easy to kill. It is equally easy to destroy glass windows. But the one act no more solves a problem than the other. Both are foolishness, since any foot can do then. Why is it only the wise who perceive that it is wisdom to let live, when even lunatics can sometimes understand that it is better to open a window than to smash the glass?—From The Book Of The Sayings Of Tsiang Samdup
The following morning Grim gave me the news: Lhaten had come all the way from Leh to tell us that Sidiki ben Mahommed's two senior wives were safe and being cared for by their relatives; his house and all his stores were burned to ashes but the cattle had been saved and none of his servants injured. There was a hue and cry for Sidiki, and for ourselves, who were reported to be Tibetan bandits; and the discovery of dead bodies in the snow, a mile away from the burned house, had led the police to suppose that we bandits had quarreled among ourselves as to the possession of Sidiki's girl-wife. The fact that Sidiki had not been found dead had led to the presumption he was being held for ransom.
Sidiki's two senior wives had been questioned and had talked, of course. But they had told such a weird story about two white men in disguise, in company with two Indians and two Tibetans, accepting Sidiki's hospitality in order to be able to admit the other bandits in the night, that nobody believed a word they said and they themselves were actually under the suspicion of having betrayed Sidiki to his enemies on the score of jealousy, it being notorious that the new young wife had had the household by the ears.
"The long and short of it is," said Grim, "that nobody believes we're white men and nobody feels inclined to send an expedition after us. Snowstorms have covered our tracks, and between us and Leh the drifts have become pretty well impassable. So we're safe from pursuit. We Can go forward. We can't go back. "Sidiki and his wife will have to stay here until spring, when he proposes to make his way to Delhi and cash that draft on Benjamin you promised him. By that time we'll be in Tibet, or else dead, so it won't matter whether Sidiki talks or not. Lhaten has promised to get word to Benjamin about Mordecai's fate; he's to be told we did our best for his son-in-law, which will leave the old man feeling that we haven't neglected our obligation to him.
"Lhaten seems to come and go as he pleases. I don't know how he does it, but there are probably lines of communication where snow won't lie because of wind or some such reason; and the whole of this country is dotted with hermits. You can't make me believe that a thousand hermits would all choose to live in limestone caves in wintertime just for the sake of being lonely. One man,—ten men might; not a thousand. The story, of course, is they're meditating on the life to come. It's this life that amuses me; I'll bet they feel the same about it. You know how a man can use his time up listening in on radio. And d'you remember how, when Younghusband reached Lhassa with his troops, they knew it in Bombay before the government had the news in Simla? Radio was a pipe dream twenty years ago. Will you bet me that twenty years from now men can't dispense with radio and relay thought without the use of electricity? Will you bet me it isn't the hermits all over Asia who pass thought-waves along? Can you give me a better guess how information travels—true and false? We know it does travel. Did you ever talk with a hermit who hadn't all the latest news?"
